Frank Stanton, 98, Broadcast Pioneer Was CBS President
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Frank Stanton, a broadcasting pioneer and CBS president for 26 years who helped turn its TV operation into the “Tiffany network” and built CBS News into a respected information source, has died. He was 98.
Stanton died in his sleep at his Boston home on Sunday, longtime friend Elisabeth Allison said.
Stanton once summarized his duties as “keeping the company going.” But during his long association with CBS founder William S. Paley, the psychologist helped build the company from a modest chain of radio affiliates into a communications empire whose centerpiece became the nation’s pre-eminent TV network.
As the head of CBS beginning in 1946, Stanton oversaw varied enterprises that included Columbia Records, CBS Laboratories, a book publisher, a toy maker, and, for a brief time, the New York Yankees.
Paley, a radio man, didn’t initially grasp the potential of television.
“He thought it would hurt radio,” said Stanton, who took a chance on the new medium by signing a comic with untested appeal named Jackie Gleason, then nailing down a new sitcom, “I Love Lucy,” which might otherwise have gone to NBC.
“Who else had the opportunity to take a new medium, television, and plot its future?” Stanton once said. He called the job so interesting “I would have almost paid them to do it.”
After CBS, Stanton was chairman of the American Red Cross for six years.
